Article - A TAXONOMY OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES OF UGANDA by Oweyegha-Afunaduula

F.C. OWEYEGHA- AFUNADUULA

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Introduction

Environmental problems and issues are extraordinary. They begin with humans as their precursor and end with humans as their victim (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 1994). They concern the survival of humans, their local communities, their nation, their global village- Planet Earth- and the Biosphere.

In order to effectively deal with environmental issues, it is necessary that thorough institutionalisation of environmentally- conscious laws and regulatory agencies takes place. However, this is not enough. Political instruments must be developed that link governors, institutions, regulations, regulatory agencies, the periphery, environmental groups, regulated interests and others, in a continuing policy-making network.

Environmental issues also demand checks and balances that are themselves balanced by removing delays, double standards and contradictions in making and implementing policy. They demand that a crisis mentality towards them is avoided. They demand that major political conflicts entailed in the law are judiciously resolved so that any vagueness and contradictions are removed from the environmental legislation. They demand that adequate financial and human resources are allocated to the Minister responsible for the environment to redress them. And they demand that effective policy is in place to ensure that public officials collaborate by discussing strategies to transcend institutionalised competition. (Oweyegha-Afunaduula,1994).

All these demands imposed on the political system by environmental issues are legitimate and should be satisfied because environmental conservation is sensitive to the failure to satisfy them (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 1994). An important step, however, is to ensure that the environmental issues are properly identified.

Uganda at the moment requires a re-examination or the taxonomy of its environmental issues with a view to making it reflect the multidimensional ability of the environment. So far, the tendency has been to recapitulate environmental issues that are confined in the ecological-biological dimension, while ignoring those that arise in the socio-economic or the socio-cultural dimensions of the environment.

This article attempts to widen human perception of environmental issues in Uganda by emphasising the unity between the three dimensions of the environment and submitting that it is disservice to environmental conservation if most effort is concentrated in the ecological-biological dimension. In this breath, a taxonomy of Uganda’s environmental issues is given as a tool for integrating all the dimensions of the environment in a society to grasp, be aware of and understand all the issues at hand.

Environmental Problems vis-à-vis Environmental Issues

Environmental problems are not necessarily environmental issues. To become an environmental problem, a problem must be raised to that level through a rigorous policy-making process. Public policy itself usually develops with reasonable order and predictability. Governments will respond to a public issue by turning it into a policy. This begins when an issue can be placed upon the government’s agenda. However, the promotion of an issue to government agenda does not necessarily ensure that a public policy will emerge (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 1994). It is, nevertheless the first step that invites the policy cycle at the national level.

Environmental Issues as Policy

To make an environmental policy at the national level, an environmental problem normally passes through a number of ‘policy phases’, namely: agenda setting ( whereby many issues are listed); formulation and legitimisation (whereby only a few issues reach this stage); implementation; assessment and reform; and, finally, policy termination (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 1994). Environmental policy-making is thus a combination of phases in the policy cycle in the correct order.

Factors Influencing Environmental Policy-Making

Several factors will influence whether an environmental issue becomes an environmental policy. These factors are concentrated in the socio-economic and (especially) the socio-cultural dimensions of the environment. Among them are constitutional constraints; role of organised interests; role of environmental groups, political feasibility; the political climate; changing political alliances; shifting public moods; the economic climate and strategies; short-term and long-term political gains; bureaucratic competitiveness; the efficiency of the judiciary and political tactic; general ecological and environmental literacy of leaders and the led; power of discretion; and readiness of the Ministry responsible for environmental conservation to act.

Environmental Issues From Local People’s Viewpoint

It is important to recognise that, for the local people, environmental problems easily equate to environmental issues. As such, the local people are always ahead of government in their perception of environmental problems as environmental issues.
From the viewpoint of the local people, Uganda’s spectrum of environmental issues is wide and is getting wider as seen in the debilitating socio-economic, socio-cultural, and ecological-biological crises sweeping across the country.

Among the ills the local people consider as issues are : the diminishing land resources whose surface is evermore becoming like the surface of the moon; poverty; illiteracy (both basic and secondary or neo-illiteracy); human rights violations (e.g., lack of adequate and clean water; ignorance; environmental diseases related to dirty water (such as tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery); political corruption and unaccountability; unlimited power of the institution of the President; declining health security; militarisation of environment and minds of Ugandans; environmental bankruptcy; moral decadence; threat of toxic waste dumping; AIDS and acid rain; foreign penetration and domination (environmental; economic, political, social, cultural, intellectual); overall decline in commitment to social development of the people; and firewood energy scarcity.

A serious student of the environment and development must be fully conversant with these various elements in the spectrum of environmental issues, the interplay between them and their diverse impacts and consequences.

Narrow Conception of the Environment

Unfortunately most Ugandans currently perceive environment and development very narrowly. Environment continues to be preached as if humans are not part of it. Humans are often excluded from its definition. The environmental aspects of humans, including the socio-economic and the socio-cultural, do not really feature in environmental efforts as much as they should. Preference is focussed on the biological-ecological aspects of the environment.

Development, on the other hand, continues to be preached as if humans are not and should not be at the centre of the development process. As a consequence, the relationship between environment, development and such important value concepts as human rights, democracy and social justice and equity are not integrated in the process. Environment is not trees, animals, soil, water, forests or the atmosphere and, therefore, a matter for scientists only. However, as practiced, environmental conservation is done as if it is for those oriented towards the ecological and biological sciences. Yet environment, does not raise ecological- biological concerns only but also socio-economic and socio-cultural ones.

It should , therefore, not be surprising that much of the curriculum of instruction at Makerere University’s Institute of Environment and Natural Resources is geared towards producing environmentalists knowledgeable in ecological/biological techniques and practices in conservation. Environmentalists wishing to enhance their environmental knowledge but who are oriented in the socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions of the environment will not easily find a niche in the Institute. This status quo is repeated in many Universities in Africa.

There will be no real progress in the conservation of Uganda’s environment unless the people of Uganda, the leaders and especially intellectuals become committed to the wider conception of the environment which recognises its three dimension (ecological-biological, socio-economic, and socio-cultural) assigns all environmental problems and issues to these dimensions and across them.. However, the mere commitment to the wider conception of the environment is not enough. Ugandans involved in practical conservation or those acting as environmental educators become knowledgeable on the taxonomy of the multitude of environmental issues in order to systematically deal with them. This is important if the country is going to make strides towards conserving not only habitats of animals and plants but also human habitations and livelihood towards the year 2000 and beyond.

Taxonomy Of Environmental Issues Of Uganda

Attempts to formulate environmental issues are only 14 years old. In 1984, the World Commission for Environment and Development (WCED) gave the World its first formulation of environmental issues, which it called ‘ The Standard Formulation of Environmental Issues.’

The Standard Formulation

The standard formulation of environmental issues recognised three interrelated groups of environmental issues, namely:
Environmental pollution issues;
natural resources issues; and
human settlements.
Listed under environmental pollution were the following issues;
Carbondioxide and climatic charge;
Air pollution (including acid rain and radioactive rain;
Water pollution;
Chemicals;
hazardous waste;
nuclear wastes; and
Marine and coastal wasters pollution.

To these types of pollution, however, we may safely add cultural and lingual pollution, including the invasion of the environment by transnational corporations; foreign values; the so-called high-yielding varieties of coops (HYVS); even AIDS; pollution by second-hand clothing, mostly the synthetic fabrics; and pollution by second-hand vehicles and technology.

Natural resources issues include depletion of forests, particularly tropical ones; loss of genetic resources; loss of cropland; soil erosion; desertification; energy issues (especially fuel wood); efficient use of surface water resources; depletion and degradation of ground water resources; and depletion of living marine resources. To these, however, we may add the depletion of human capital through brain drain, and the depletion of local seed banks through seed drain by developed countries.

Human settlement issues include land use and tenure; human habitat; water supply and sanitation; social, educational and other services (e.g., health); and managing very rapid urban growth, including the mega-city.

Associated with the various environmental issues, are those addressed relatively early in the 1960s, abandoned and then revived recently, such population spiral. Others have attracted attention and debate only recently, and they include; environment and international trade; environment and foreign aid; environment and multinational corporations; environment and human rights; environment and women; environment and democracy; management of internationally shared resources (global commons); food security; etc.

The standard formulation of global environmental issues has, however, a number of problems:
First, with a few exceptions, it tends to focus action on the effects of environmental problems rather than on their sources ( that is, it is a react-cure approach; not an anticipatory- preventive approach).

Second, work on the global issues has tended to examine the key issues as environmental issues alone; resources issues alone; conservation issues alone; or management issues alone, rather than as developmental issues or as joint development- environmental issues. The approach, therefore, has been individualistic rather than holistic.

Third, most work has also tended to examine each of the critical issues in isolation of each other and yet all are tightly linked to one or two common causes: energy policies that favour fuel consumption or transportation; tax and trade policies that favour large companies; eutrophication of surface water; nitrate pollution of ground water; and degradation of soils all share the same cause; that is, agricultural policies which promote and induce an excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides; and
soil erosion, expansion of deserts as well as their effects and damage costs all have common policy causes.

Fourth, most of the work, with the standard formulation focussing on effects rather than cause and on ways and means to ameliorate the effects, reflects a very narrow view of environmental policy and ignores broader policy needs and obligations (that is, it reacts to damage done and to cure policies)

There is, therefore, need to move away from focus on effects of environmental problems to their policy sources. A thorough-going environmental policy must be a comprehensive, horizontal policy field; an integral component of economic and social policy whose mission is, at least, to anticipate damage and reduce the negative external effects of human activity and to promote economic and social policies that expand the basis for sustainable development. In doing so, it should allow for diversity and uniqueness of specific regional and local situations.

Alternative Formulation

The standard formulation of environmental issues does not lend itself easily to such a goal. An alternative formulation is, therefore, necessary. Such a formulation should focus on the common sources in sectoral policies rather than on the effects. These are energy policies, agricultural policies and food security measures, forests and agriculture, and international economic relations.

Energy policies are the common cause of carbondioxide and climate change; and air pollution and acid depletion. Improving energy efficiency is a must and should itself embrace a wide range of options available to society in the choice of technology for energy production and in building economic and social systems that are more energy-efficient and less resource-wasteful. This demands a review of transport policies and a reconsideration of energy development options with a view to shift from fossil fuels to unconventional energy sources such as hydroelectric power, wind energy, biomass and direct solar energy. However, institutional roadblocks to such a shift are expected. For Uganda and other underdeveloped countries, focus should be on fuel wood (and related sources of energy such as biomass), which is now in critical short supply, but still remains the poor man’s energy source.

Agricultural land and food policies are the common causes of soil erosion, desertification and, hence, loss of cropland, loss of wildlife habitats, destruction of human habitation. Poverty is the real cause of drought, famine and hunger in Uganda in particular and Africa in general. The mix of all the issues is being exacerbated by inefficient use, in agriculture, of surface waters and the depletion and degradation of the ground water resources.

Forest and agricultural practices are the causes of the depletion of tropical forests. Trade and aid policies of the global economy are exacerbating the problem. Expanding agricultural pressures have serious ecological-biological, socio- economic, socio-cultural and socio-political consequences such as increasing flooding of irrigation systems, loss of croplands and crops, social collapse, environmental refugees, political and human rights violations.

In the international relations field, certain policies and practices governing investment, trade and aid have had detrimental effects on environmental conditions and the potential of many countries, including Uganda, to achieve sustainable development.

Multilateral and bilateral aid policies are often implemented without prior environmental assessment of implications of assisted projects. Consequently, the social and economic benefits are often outweighed by environmental, socio-economic and political costs. The role of international financial institutions, principally the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in heightening these costs is enormous.

Today this role is being effected in Africa through structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and their environmental arm - the National Environment Action Plans (NEAPS). The Global Coalition for Africa (GCA) is the strategy being employed by the West to ensure the political implementation of these policies. It is these policies that have given rise to the brain drain and seed drain syndromes that are now plaguing Africa. They are also playing a significant role in the exacerbation of the environmental refugee malaise afflicting Uganda and Africa. Whenever huge projects are being implemented geo-politically through foreign aid, displacement of huge populations of people is a must. Even war has become a huge project backed by foreign aid and refugees are an important product.

On the basis of the above-mentioned considerations, we are in a position to give a workable formulation (or taxonomy) of the key environmental issues as follows:
Environment, development, population and technology;
Environment, development and Energy (including CO2 , Acid rain, radioactive rain, fuel wood, renewable energy, conservation, etc);
Environment, development and Industry (including Chemicals, waste management, resource recovery and recycling);
Environment, agriculture and Food security (including soil erosion, desertification, loss of cropland, wildlife habitats, seed drain, etc);
Environment, Agriculture, Forestry (including tropical forests, biological diversity, biocultural diversity, agroforestry, etc);
Environment, development, Human settlements (including urbanisation, the mega-City, social amenities, environmental health, human habitations, livelihoods etc);
Environment and international economic relations (including foreign aid and investment, monetary policy, trade policy, international externalities, diplomacy, environmental advocacy, role of multinational corporations, etc);
Global environmental monitoring and reporting (i.e., GEMS);
International corporation in environmental protection (international organisations, treaties, conventions, and negotiations; environment in dialogue);
Environment, development and gender (especially women);
Environment, development, human rights;
Environment, development, democracy;
Environment, development, political systems;
Environment, education, illiteracy, development;
Environment, development, communication.

This formulation of environmental issues has many advantages, namely:
It permits focus on development goals and sectors that are of primary concern to the people and governments;
In enables humans to address a new and critically important audience - those key individuals and agencies that have a major influence on economic and social policies, and on developments in governments and industry;
It enables consideration of proposals of strategies that are mainly anticipatory and of preventive in character rather than reactive and curative;
It provides a different and more effective basis for examining new forms existing of international cooperation (build-in versus add-on policies).
It is, however, difficult to follow this formulation without a readiness of humankind to accept that new institutions are required. The existing institutions emerged as too limited in scope (i.e., have been add-on to other policy fields and international with universalised ideals).

Conclusion

Viewing environmental policy not as add-on but as an integral component of economic and social policy to be built in the institutions concerned with environmental policy can no longer be postponed if mankind is serious about conservation only this way can we engage in innovative thinking on new and more effective forms of multinational discussions agreements, laws and appropriate institutions necessary to effect and lead the enviroindialogue for sustainable development.